“The World is a Beautiful Place” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (read by Lawrence Ferlinghetti):

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing
all the time

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn’t half so bad
if it isn’t you

Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
‘living it up’

Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician

(Here’s my YouTube reading of “The World is a Beautiful Place”).

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I stumbled upon this poem in the library after lunch and it immediately captivated me. This piece covers themes of death and ignorance and provides surprising answers to questions on my mind.

Here are three takeaways from this piece by the late Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

1. An imperfect, balanced world

if you don’t mind a touch of hell/ now and then/ just when everything is fine/ because even in heaven/ they don’t sing/ all the time

A key literary device throughout this poem is the juxtaposition between a beautiful place and imagery like hell, dying and bomb; images that aren’t conventionally beautiful.

This suggests that beauty doesn’t mean perfect peace, but balance. Perhaps the beautiful isn’t an abundance of light, but a harmony between the light and dark, that it is only through the darkness that light is revealed.

There is something terrifying an excess of the “beautiful” like happiness or economic prosperity – a concept explored by Huxley’s dystopian Brave New World.

2. Blissful, human ignorance

if you don’t mind some people dying/ all the time/ or maybe only starving/ some of the time/ which isn’t half so bad/ if it isn’t you

We are all the heroes of our own stories.

This ignorance can be comforting in troubling times, with Lawrence juxtaposing the harsh themes of death and starvation with the comfort of it happening to others.

Is this blissful ignorance a criticism of human behaviour? Is it a moral calling to care for others as ourselves? Not necessarily. In the next stanza, Lawrence acknowledges that there are many things that our fool flesh/ is heir to. The word “heir” suggests that this ignorance doesn’t make us bad: it simply makes us human. We cannot be expected to think beyond ourselves.

3. The smiling mortician

Yes/ but then right in the middle of it/ comes the smiling/ mortician

In the second-last stanza, we see free-flowing and rhythmic prose filled with delightful imagery of flowers, dancing and picnics. Furthermore, the whirlwind of bright adjectives illustrate the great activities available to us as citizens of Earth.

But suddenly, Yes/ but then right in the middle of it halts the exciting imagery. And what comes to interrupt the show?

The smiling mortician. The funeral director.

Death is a topic I unconsciously avoid in my mind. It’s much easier to organize your life knowing that you have many years left ahead than to always watch your back. The reality that life can be taken from you at any moment can be endlessly disturbing.

Yet, Lawrence leaves us with one comforting imagery: a smiling mortician. Not a devilish or a sneaky mortician, but a smiling one. This smile could be interpreted any number of ways, but here’s my two cents on what this means:

Let us live in such a way that when the grim reaper comes, he comes with a round of applause at a life well lived.

Mr Ferlinghetti, I hope you smiled back at the mortician, shook his hand and danced. You have made the world a more beautiful place. Rest in peace.